App Designed to Track Social Media Correspondence Secures Government Deals in Australia

Tech entrepreneur Nathan Cram, who claims to have developed
a world-first technology with the software behind his new app Brolly, has
secured the opportunity to put his tech to a serious test as the start-up
company recently locked in deals with the Australian government for the use of
his app, designed to monitor and capture all social media correspondence between
a client organisation and the public.

Mr Cram was first inspired to create the application, which
not only scrubs social media platforms for data regarding posted communications
but also takes screenshots of linked websites and downloads any associated
media, when he was forced to rely on Twitter updates during a 2014 bushfire. He
recounted the story to The Australian Financial Review:

“I was holidaying in Lorne with my family and we could see
these plumes of smoke over the escarpment and we were following all the crisis
communication channels, listening to the sirens and talking to neighbours about
updates, but it was a single tweet sent by the CFA that influenced my decision
to get the hell out of there,” he said.

“It got me thinking … even things like email are
automatically backed up for compliance records and I could see a lot of value
in the conversations these organisations were having with citizens via social
media … but I was wondering what measures were in place to protect the
organisation. What would happen if that tweet from the CFA was ill-advised and
wasn’t approved?

“The tweet could just be deleted … but what about the ethics
from a citizen perspective, or what would happen if I raised an FOI request?”

So Mr Cram set about developing the technology himself, spending
the next few years researching the publishing process within public organisations
in the hope of creating automatic, ceaselessly-operating software designed for
the creation of a social media compliance record for these organisations.
Apparently his endeavour was something of a success, as the resulting app will
now be utilised by not only the Department of Immigration and Border Control,
but also WorkSafe Victoria, the Queensland Department of Science, Information
Technology, Innovation and Sciences, and the City of Albany council in Western
Australia.

While the app does capture sensitive information such as
when a post was originally made, shared, edited or deleted, it claims to “safeguard
privacy” in the way it operates, only capturing two-way conversations between a
government body and citizen, in addition to any standalone posts issued by the
agency in question. Remarks made regarding any given organisation will also
only be recorded if said organisation is tagged.

WorkSafe social media manager Lysandra Godley commented on
how above all, the app is a valuable time-saver for herself and her team. She
told the Australian Financial Review, “The volume of customer interaction is
steady and the public usually connect with us for advice reactively rather than
proactively. WorkSafe needs a lot of information when managing these reports so
we use social media as a gateway to connect through traditional communication.
I’m confident that we can retrieve this information because Brolly captures
these conversations for us.”